


To Recognize the Feeling

by ginsbergonthemoon



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 03:51:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1495537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginsbergonthemoon/pseuds/ginsbergonthemoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a return from the dead and an illness, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are forced to catch their breath at one of the Holmes' family's cottages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Recognize the Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> It's non-season 3 compliant, written pretty much the day after I finished season 2. Lots of fluff, a modified asexual relationship, and lots of snuggling. (Inspired a little bit by the cottage scenes of Performance in a Leading Role).
> 
> If you see mistakes, have suggestions, want to tell me how awful it was or have a nice thin to say, please drop me a line in the comments!

"John Watson"

The words are more rumble than sound, but pressed against Sherlock's chest as he is, with nothing but the fire's crackle making any other sound in the cottage, John can feel the words vibrate through his jumper and back. He leans into the sound, pressing closer to his partner's chest as Sherlock mumbles the word again and again, turning it over and over almost like a prayer. Before everything, the fall and Manchester and the endless injuries and recoveries in between and after, , they'd made rules between them. A code to be kept to hold together the fragile connection between two such different hearts in impossibly different vessels. And at the top of that list was that Sherlock never said the words John seemed to let fall from his lips constantly. 

Said almost unconsciously when Sherlock astounded him yet again with an impossibly accurate deduction, whispered in the quiet of morning when Sherlock was asleep for the first time in days, wrung from his lips when he just couldn't hold them in a moment longer.

_I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. ___

John couldn't say it enough, just as he couldn't stop reminding Sherlock to eat or shower or please clean out that cut before it got infected and John had to amputate his hand, or stop drawing blankets over him when he finally collapsed after a case, or stop remembering the exact kind of tea he liked and the the dish he ordered when they got Thai takeout. If he stops, doesn't show this beautiful, mad force of nature how much he loves him, then maybe he will move on, bored, sweep someone else up in his path and leave John a shell of what he had never thought he could be.

But they aren't words Sherlock can say, and John accepts it. Sometimes he still sees a tiny flare of pain behind the grey-blue eyes when he slams doors or storms out of the flat to cool is temper in air not being wholly consumed by the insufferable prick and his arrogance and his mess.

Sherlock doesn't have to say it, because John knows anyway. Through long, slim fingers trailed down his back, the arms wrapped tightly around him from behind without warning, the clean dishes that appeared in precarious stacks on the counter, or the space Sherlock left beside him or his favorite channels already on the telly: it was there. John had learned to read the words in Sherlock's motions and actions and the lines of his face. He has learned the things Sherlock cannot start himself, and the boundaries these things must have. Learned that when Sherlock-- infinite, brilliant, lexicography of a man Sherlock-- says his name, quietly, without provocation or reason, over and over, it was his way of saying those words he couldn't trust himself with. 

John places his finger on pages 95 and closes the book, leaning his head into the space between Sherlock's right shoulder and cheek. The detective is curled along the back and sides of the sofa like and expensive afghan, radiating heat under flannel pajamas and one of John's tee shirts with John laying at the center. He's willing to forgive the accident of creation that capped his height at five foot seven before he ever joined the service because it also allows for their bodies to slot together perfectly like this.

Sherlock's breath is hot against his neck and the small patch of collarbone visible at the neck of his jumper. Everything about him is a blaze of heat; it had been a surprising, almost absurd contrast at first. The ice in his voice, in his bearing, in his dealings with the whole world concealed a fiery core that no one had ever gotten close enough to touch. It was a small marvel to John that beneath the frigid, calculating exterior there was a body blazing with almost feverish heat, a molten temper, and an all-consuming wildfire of addictive passion. 

His feet had fallen asleep two chapters ago-- the cottage was full of books, fiction and non-fiction and everything between, with worn spines and much dog-eared pages and spidery annotations that John had wanted to read the instant he saw them, if only to know what a younger Sherlock had filled his mind up with-- but he was loath to stretch his feet for fear of cracking the idyllic bubble of warmth and stillness in the Sussex cottage. Five days ago they'd arrived with little more than a suitcase and John's laptop, assured by Mycroft that they'd find everything they needed within, and if he saw either of them in London before Sherlock had gained back the stone he'd lost when he was ill there wouldn't even be a body to bury.

A rest holiday by blackmail, brought on by the same pneumonia that had so quieted the normally manic consulting detective. In the months after the Manchester Hunt-- as John had called it in his blog-- Sherlock had seemed even more conscious of his mortality than after his actual, fraudulent death. It didn't stop him from pacing thunderously through the halls of the Yard, shouting to this or that officer about unspeakably dull they were being when the facts were all right there before their faces. Nor did it dissuade him from staying awake for nights on end cracking cold case after case on marathon coffee binges that made John queasy just watching.

But the mad tears through London were rare, there was more intricate plotting than dodging bullets, and for all John what it said about his lifestyle that this was considered a step in the direction of safety, he knew there had to have been a very good reason for Sherlock to go plunging into the Thames at one in the morning. In October.

When Lestrade and the EMTs had fished Sherlock out, shivering and sopping wet, with a hypothermic but still breathing young woman in his arms, John had bitten his tongue. The downsize in cases and greater regard Sherlock paid to their importance was his way of showing John that he wanted to be around for him for as many years as possible. So John had followed resolutely when they wrapped his idiot partner in a shock blanket, and come the next morning with the 'morning after a hospital visit' bag they'd shoved in the closet with everything he'd hoped would be a relic of days gone by. 

Careful by Sherlock's standards was better than before, now that they both had something fragile as crystal and necessary as air to protect, but not always careful enough. The lingering sniffle of Sherlock's return home had turned into a wet, rattling cough, and a week later John was watching nearly a pint of fluid get pumped out of Sherlock's lungs. There was only so much pushing he could do, only so many bowls of chicken soup and hot water bottles and tabs of paracemetol and demands to please take care of himself even if it was just for John's sake that he could make, doctor or no, partner of no.

Wild animals are never really tamed, and John would never want him to be anything more or less than his natural unruly self; for all his heart aches and chest seizes up when Sherlock throws his entire life into a case. He doesn't take the same risks anymore, doesn't do the cases out of boredom or just to show off, but danger is as much a part of Sherlock as his blood and marrow and with danger comes consequences.

The infection is just about gone now, antibiotics generally do their job when one has an army doctor to ensure one was taking them according to a strict regimen, but the detective was still wearing John's biggest jumper about the "family's country retreat", as Mycroft had called it.

And it was, truly, a beautiful cottage. Nestled amid fields with forest butting up against the property to the North and a road leading to the town from the West it seemed like something out of a Jane Austen novel, complete with ivy and cobblestones and patina-ed window latches. Everything was either dark ash or pale cedar wood, the furniture an odd mix of elegant dilapidation that John had begun to realized was probably Sherlock's trademark. The man assigned reason to everything, and would only collect something according to his own, narrow logic, but once he'd collected it Sherlock never seemed to get rid of anything, just hoarded things around him like a pale dragon.

_I used to spend school holidays here, after I turned sixteen my time was split between here and school. I got away every chance I could, the dormitories were atrocious at Eton and worse at Cambridge-- drafty._

_You came on your own?_

_Mycroft had his first job by then-- a secretary in the Department of Foreign Affairs. Mummy was still well ensconced in her espionage network. It was better like this. More room to think._

_You must have been lonely sometimes, even you._

_One has to have felt the alternative, to recognize the feeling._

John couldn't help but imagine the man pressed into the cushions behind him as a young man here: curled up with a stack of books, pacing in front of the french windows with a violin tucked under his chin, tapping the bow lightly against his forehead, deep in thought. The imprints young Holmes had made on the place seemed to be seeping up into the consciousness of the present Sherlock-- his Sherlock. He lounged on the plush armchairs as though they'd been made for him, ensconced in towers of books that reached up to John's waist. They appeared in unlabeled white boxes at all hours of the day, courtesy of the British government no doubt, but John didn't question their appearance nor the fact that the titles always seemed to be of deep interest to Sherlock. Anywhere else, even a seemingly unlimited supply of reading material would have had Sherlock climbing the bookcases in frustration, grinding his teeth and devising new ways to destroy the remaining functional cooking appliances.

But here, in the lilac tinged air, he was content to read, stare out at the town from a small balcony on the second floor, to ramble aimlessly around the property with John, their intertwined hands stuffed together into his coat pocket.

The peace was almost too idyllic. John turns slightly to press his face into Sherlock's cotton covered shoulder, wonders what could possibly be turning the wheels of his mind so quickly as to allow his body this precious stillness. They fit together like puzzle pieces, Sherlock's arm around his back, John's legs between and around Sherlock's knees. A bone deep exhaustion keeps him from asking, from disturbing the peace, but he knows from the itch in the back of his mind that the question will have to come sometime or he may well explode. But not yet, not when he's still drinking in the rare novelty of quiet.

Rumbling contentedly Sherlock nestles into John's neck, planting a breathy, open mouthed kiss on his jaw. Hands slowly slide under jumpers and waistbands, lips find one another and lock together with easy familiarity. John's hands rove over the warm skin of Sherlock's back, feeling the bunch and release of muscles he's still getting used to . Sometime during his absence Sherlock's bony, gangly form had filled out into an expanse of satiny porcelain over lean, sloping muscles. If anything it made him that much more beautiful, like a work of art transformed by strain and adversity into a sinuous predatory animal. 

Every inch of him was breathtaking, begging to be worshipped and pushed and tested until John could unravel him completely, turn hunter into prey, into a kill, into a trophy. But there had been and would be time for that, tomorrow, the day after, stretching on toward a horizon John hoped never to catch sight of. There were things they might never do, John knew, and things they might never do again. But that was simply the way Sherlock was, and that was simply what came with loving him, and John couldn't even imagine them any other way.

For now it was enough just to blend their warmth under the beamed ceilings. The hands rubbing languid circles over his hipbone and combing lazily through his hair are steady, warm, at ease, not probing, digging, or searching for answers. Sherlock's peace of mind is almost scary, like a tiger sleeping at the foot of your bed. He's ready for the other shoe to drop, but can push the thought away, compartmentalize it as he would the threat of death when a soldier needs your brain and steady hands. Instead he pushes closer to Sherlock and the shabby brocade sofa beneath them.

It's Sherlock who finally comes up for air, only enough to break the kiss and rest his forehead against John's, greying brown and dark dark curls mingling above their eyes. Gently, Sherlock presses a chaste kiss to the corner of John's mouth and frees one hand to tug a quilt down from the sofa-back. John chuckles when it wafts down to leave just Sherlock's nose peeking out, crinkled with indignation. Even pulled ludicrously over his head the quilt is long enough to cover Sherlock's bare feet at the far end of the sofa. John closes his eyes as Sherlock settles behind him again, snuggling his head to John's back, so cat-like John almost expects him to begin purring.

He smells of John's cheap soap and tea so black it's almost astringent, and while the blanket smells mostly of cloves and grass there is an unmistakable undercurrent sweet, musky, sweet almond in both. It's the same smell that clings to the sheets of their bed and the woolen greatcoat hanging from a rack of antlers beside the cottage door. 

It also happens to be a potent narcotic-- to John anyway-- and eases him into a half-dozing haze, until the sensation of a pointed elbow jabbing into the muscle just above his bad shoulder jolts him into wakefulness.

"We could, if you wanted to." Sherlock murmurs, his chin stabbing painfully into John's shoulder. He's obviously just finished a complicated argument about something, but John's sleepy brain is still trying to concoct a nice way to ask his partner to sand off his pointy edges.

"Could wot?" he yawns, shifting to better hear Sherlock. His feet are completely asleep numb now, and there's a very uncomfortable hitch in his back, really uncomfortable to roust him from the quilt's warmth.

Sherlock''s hand, tracing languid and hypnotic circles under John's jumper, goes still. "Have you not been listening to anything I've said?"

"Christ Sherlock," he scrubs a hand over his face and levers himself up to a chorus of small pops, trying not to send all the muscles in his leg into a simultaneous cramp, "I was asleep. What did you ask?" It's impossible to tell if Sherlock's tone is offended or simply annoyed, particularly when John is still trying to shake the last vestiges of sleep from his mind. The little huffing sigh Sherlock makes skews it in favor of the latter. It ruffles a wayward lock of dark hair-- They're both badly in need of a haircut, and John's not really looking forward to the stubble burns they'll both get if they put off shaving any longer-- but he's looking more nervous than anything else. The thought rakes up the worries John's had buried in his mind for days.

_He's going to tell me off for doting on him, going to push me away, God maybe I've been at him too much lately._

_  
Is that really what I've been doing? Doting?_ John's mind is racing away from him now, rapidly approaching places he doesn't really enjoy visiting. A certain amount of nagging comes with being a doctor-- some patients, some people just don't bloody know how to do what they're told when it's good for them. But maybe he has been mother henning around Sherlock since he'd come back from the dead.

_I just can't lose you again. Maybe that's never occurred to you but God, Sherlock, I would be ruined if you were gone. I can't do it twice._

"John."

John looks down at Sherlock and immediately feels the sensation of being probed. Satisfied John is all there again, Sherlock sits up a bit, eyes still locked on John's.

"We could do this, John."

"Do what? Have a lie in? I was pretty shocked myself but I don't think it needs that big an announcement," he replies. It's not worth getting in the way of Sherlock when he's obviously prepared some massive idea; better to spend the time figuring out how to cope with whatever insanity he's come up with.

"Don't be dull John it doesn't suit you. I meant, this," he gestures vaguely around the room. John follows his hand, taking in the fireplace and books and maps tacked to the wall, still not quite comprehending.

"I thought you hated taking holidays? Or do you just hate it when your older brother blackmails you into taking a sick leave from… life?"

Although he's still concerned, watching Sherlock grapple with his desire to fling John bodily through a window and make him understand is very, very gratifying.

"No, I meant all of this. You and me. I could alter my methods of acquiring and solving cases slightly, officially extend my services to private clients--"

John's stomach lurches slightly, remembering. He is still wary of any tea he hasn't seen made from start to finish.

"--and perhaps enlist more help in the actual groundwork of evidence gathering. We could have this."

A heavy moment passes, John hardly breathing as the full gravity of Sherlock's words sink in. He blinks once, twice, slowly, opens his mouth, shuts it again. Sherlock is watching him with an intensity that would burn holes through even the toughest inspectors at the Yard but John doesn't rush, careful not to say anything before he understands.

"What are you saying, Sherlock?" His voice is low, grave. Even the fire seems to quiet itself, just a hushed crackle at his back.

"I want this for us, John. I want to…" he closes his eyes as if struggling for words, although John is sure that can't be it. Sherlock doesn't struggle for words, he sometimes struggles to arrange his thoughts in a way mere mortals can grasp but he's never speechless, not like this.

"We're together Sherlock, ten months of sleeping in one bed and wearing each other's socks is pretty, well, together." In spite of the tension John's mouth quirks into a smile at the way Sherlock's entire face is scrunched now, tiny furrows crinkling at the corners of his eyes, rippling the pale expanse of his forehead and bunching the aristocratic slope of his nose.

"John."

"What? You're just getting dramatic again Sherlock, what else could you possibly...?"

"John." John looks into Sherlock's eyes again, and that is the moment a weight drops into his stomach like a stone. He couldn't have explained, not with all the psychology or neuroscience in the world but all at once he realizes-- he knows.

A flicker of bewildered hurt shadows Sherlock's face as John almost leaps to his feet. He immediately regrets it, both for how it must look to Sherlock for his partner to all but run away when's gotten as close to proposing as his emotionally stunted self can get, and also for the ache that pulls at his joints when he straightens up.

_You've been getting lazy John, when's the last time you went for a jog?_ some part of his mind not reeling nags sharply. John shoves it down, refusing to acknowledge anything but Sherlock's words.

"Fucking hell Sherlock you're serious."

"There's no reason for me not to be. You said it yourself, that it was almost impossible for you to get through and see me at the hospital, that it was getting ridiculous to do both of our taxes-- although there wasn't really any need, mine get processed through the Holmes family accounts regardless--"

"I like knowing how much money we've got left for milk between the damages to the flat and hospital charges, but that's not the point-- marriage Sherlock. It's not something you do just to get out of filing two sets of taxes. Are you asking then? If I'll marry you?" John's voice stick in his throat on the word.

Sherlock just looks back at him as though it's inconceivable that something like time honored tradition and emotional significance could in any way overshadow such obvious, practical concerns. It makes John want to punch him, half for launching this on him in the middle of a nap, and half for the fact that he can hear Sherlock muttering "sentiment" in his head. He would punch him, in fact, if he wasn't so flustered. Training to keep his cool under machine gun fire is the only thing keeping John on his feet. If not for the utter sincerity on Sherlock's face-- a bit tempered by impatience now but still uncharacteristically open-- the whole thing would be dream-like. He's tempted to pinch himself, realizes he's reacting like some 20 year-old girl being proposed to by her boyfriend, and braces his hand on the mantle instead.

"That would be the idea, John. A civil partnership technically but with all the corresponding rights and attributes under English law."

"You really want this? With rings and Harry as your sister-in-law and everything?" 

"I want you John."

"Well then," John crosses his arms across his chest, "you better ask me properly then. Watson's don't just put out without a bit of ceremony first."

Sherlock rolls his eyes but gets to his feet anyway. "A bit too late for that isn't it?"

"I'm waiting."

Donning the expression and bearing of a victorian courtier Sherlock shakes imaginary dust off his flannel pajama pants, spans the few feet between them with a step and lowers himself gravely to one knee. The image is ruined somewhat by his untidy curls sticking up in tufts and the imprint John's jumper has left on his cheek, but John bites his tongue as Sherlock takes his hand in both of his own, the ivory porcelain fingers completely enveloping his darker palm.

"John Hamish Watson, it has come to my attention that the nature of our relationship and it's effect on me can no longer continue without my demanding, begging of you, an alteration that may come to define the fabric of our lives. John Hamish Watson, John Watson, will you marry me?"


End file.
